Surrender now or surrender later

It needs to be understood that in killing Afghan soldiers and kidnapping and forcibly marrying young girls, the Taliban are only doing what they believe is morally right. According to their ideology, the whole world should come under strict Islamic rule because that is what their god Allah wants, and any means necessary to achieve that are legitimate and righteous.

If you condemn them yet your ideology has no place for the true God who created the universe and everything in it, your condemnation carries no weight. You have no answer when the Taliban fighter carrying off a terrified 12-year-old girl responds to your righteous rebuke with, “Says who?” You have no foundation for your moral judgments on their prohibitions of homosexual behavior, which in some Islamic countries carries a punishment of death. You can criticize their violent takeover of Afghanistan, but if pressed to provide a universal, binding ethic to which they are accountable, they would laugh at your attempts to make your censure stick.

The Taliban and other Islamic terrorists are so dangerous because they are committed to their ideology to the point of death. If we as a nation were as committed to a true worldview centered on the God of the Bible, who is the standard for right and wrong, we would be so much more powerful and, yes, dangerous. We would have a firm foundation for being resolute in righteousness. We would be as immovable as the Taliban in our dedication to the truth of our beliefs, and our beliefs would actually be true.

If we were a nation whose God is the LORD, we would have a Commander-in-Chief so unlike our current one. A Commander who is perfectly wise, truly good, and totally invincible. He is a God who fights for his people, when a battle must be fought.

We can be God’s people, but it requires surrender. We must give up our rebellious ways and turn ourselves in to him. When we do, he not only doesn’t punish us for going AWOL, he adopts us as his children. And empowers us by his Spirit to serve alongside him in the Army of the LORD.

Radical, Islamic ideology poses a real threat to America. The best way to avoid the unthinkable prospect of having to surrender to the Taliban, or ISIS, or Al-Qaeda is to surrender now to the only Commander-in-Chief who never, ever fails.